The Postpartum Diet (Giveaway: Parents Need to Eat Too)
I‘ve just wrapped my first week postpartum with little Clara. It’s a tumultuous time, full of euphoric highs spent gazing at one’s perfect newborn, and rock-bottom lows, where the body feels like it was hit by a truck and dragged a few miles.
Taking things one day at a time is the best approach to postpartum recovery, combined with getting plenty of rest and, most importantly, eating well.
Today I’ll share a few of my tips for wise food choices that attend to three important needs following a birth: Physical Energy & Healing, Milk Production & Quality, and Bowel Regularity.
I’ll also share a recipe for Stewed Prunes with Citrus & Cinnamon (amazing!) AND give away a copy of Debbie Koenig’s new book, Parents Need to Eat Too. (Update: this giveaway has ended.)
Oh, I just might throw in a Baby Clara photo, too, since she’s so cute! This post is packed, so read on.
Three Elements a Good Postpartum Diet Should Address
I can recall dropping by a friend’s place a couple of days after she returned from the hospital with her newborn. Bags and containers from various fast food chains littered her kitchen table and counters. The fridge contained nearly nothing fresh, and far too many cans of soft drinks. Hardly nourishing fare for a new mother attempting to breastfeed.
As I warmed up the beef and vegetable stew I had brought over for her dinner (I’m a firm believer in cooking for others), I offered to go grocery shopping, and made a few gentle suggestions for a diet change. To me, this was the biggest gift I could give her during this crucial time of recovery.
Three elements stood out in my mind this past week that I knew I needed to address in my diet. These recommendations are based solely on my three combined postpartum experiences! As every woman is unique, others’ postpartum needs may differ.
1. Physical Energy and Healing
As with pregnancy, it’s important to provide your body with nourishing, energy-boosting foods during the postpartum period and avoid the junk. Alcohol and caffeine included.
I allowed my self a few squares of chocolate last week, but avoided sugar for the most part. Why feed my body empty calories? Plus, that terrifyingly-loose post-baby body is incentive enough to avoid sugar.
Instead, for dessert I prepared a big bowl of fruit salad, coated it in a honey-vanilla syrup, and topped it with toasted coconut. Perfect. It satisfied my sweet tooth, and provided vitamin C and fiber.
Honey-Vanilla Syrup for Fruit Salad
- 2 Tablespoons honey
- 4 Tablespoons water or orange juice
- 1 vanilla pod, scraped, or 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Combine ingredients in a small sauce pot and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, stir well, and cool. Coat chopped fresh fruit in syrup and stir well. Fruit salad keeps for 2-3 days in the refrigerator.
2. Milk Production and Quality
In her book, Parents Need to Eat Too, Debbie has an excellent chapter on the breastfeeding diet. Just a few tips are below:
- Your body requires just 500 extra calories a day to support your breastfeeding.
- As a breastfeeding mom, you need adequate fluids to ensure a proper milk supply, so drink at least 8 glasses of water a day.
- What you eat winds up in your milk. If your baby is gassy or showing signs of an upset stomach, check your diet.
As far as diet goes, Debbie suggests ingredients such as almonds, oatmeal, and raspberry leaf tea to help with milk production.
Fortunately, I’ve got plenty of recipes featuring oatmeal to play with!
- Scottish Oat Scones
- Overnight Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal
- Fluffy Banana Oat Pancakes
- Apple Pie Steel-Cut Oats
3. Bowel Regularity
Oh yes, I’m going there! Ask any women who has just given birth, no matter the method – C-section, natural, or medicated – and she will agree that her bowels are a concern. You can choose over-the-counter stool softeners, or you can incorporate certain whole foods into your diet that aid and abet regularity.
Most fruits and vegetables are high in fiber and water content, and are terrific for getting the job done. Choose stone fruits, sweet potatoes, berries, and apples with the skin on. Fiber is your friend, and whole grains and nuts are packed with it. Serve up oats for breakfast, choose walnuts, pistachios and almonds for snacking, and bake a brown rice pilaf for dinner.
Danny stewed a pot of these prunes for me on the day we returned from the hospital – and they were amazing! I’d spoon them up even if I didn’t need them for their laxative qualities. They were that good.
Stewed Prunes with Citrus & Cinnamon
Ingredients
- 1 lb pitted prunes
- 1/2 orange cut from top to bottom
- 1/2 lemon cut from top to bottom
- 1 cinnamon stick
Instructions
- Slice the orange and lemon very thinly, giving multiple half-moon pieces and remove the seeds, if any.
- place all the ingredients in a heavy saucepot and just cover with water.
- Bring to a very gentle boil and cook for 30-40 minutes.
- Serve warm or refrigerate overnight. Keeps 1 week.
Notes
Nutrition
Eat Well, Spend Less
This month in our Eat Well, Spend Less series, we are talking about all things BABY! Not one, not two, but three of us who regularly contribute to this series gave birth last month; you’ve already met Clara, Tammy welcomed the adorable Channah, and Carrie added another Baby Bargains to the family.
No wonder babies are front and foremost on our minds! Here’s a list of contributors discoursing on eating well, and spending less with baby this month.
- Alyssa from Kingdom First Mom
- Jessica from LifeasMOM
- Katie from Kitchen Stewardship
- Mandi from Life Your Way
- Shaina from Food for My Family
- Tammy from Tammy’s Recipes
Giveaway! Parents Need to Eat Too
Thanks to Debbie Koenig and her publisher, William Morrow, I have an extra copy of Parents Need to Eat Too to giveaway! This is an excellent resource for new parents, so much more than just recipes.
**This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to our winner, Becca Schwartz! Becca commented:
“I was disappointed that we only received a handful of meals postpartum. seems like where I live that tradition is dying out! My favorite meal was a chicken chili that a friend brought over. I would love to win this book! At 6 weeks postpartum I’m still struggling to find time to eat healthily enough.”
Congratulations, Becca! You have been notified via email.
To enter the giveaway:
Leave a comment on this post and (if applicable) share a postpartum meal you remember – good or bad!
That’s it!
Giveaway ends tomorrow, Tuesday, March 20, at 11:59PM. Good luck to all!
Sounds like a great book!
My favorite memory is a wonderful friend who brought me homemade, whole wheat bread (with a container of real butter) to my hospital room. Since I was stuck there for a few days, it was the one good thing I had to eat!
I’m desperate for a few new ideas around here. My favorite post-partum meal was a delicious dinner brought by a friend of veggie skewers bbqed! So tasty and tummy friendly.
I remember Taco Soup…. it was awful and didn’t taste like taco at all! More like the man had blended up some random leftovers and called it soup… 🙁 It was a single guy who made us a meal, though, so I have to give him kudos for that, since most guys wouldn’t have attempted that!
I was lucky enough to have a wonderful mom cooking most of my dinners for a few months after my daughter was born…after that I made sure to double any recipe I made so I could pop leftovers in the microwave and eat that for lunches at work. Now that my kiddos are older I still make large dinners and we all eat leftovers for our lunches. My kids’ friends and teachers always comment how lucky they are to have hot homemade meals for lunches. Sometimes my son packs extras to share with his friends! It a super time saver and an easy way to feed our family well.
I need help here! I am due with #3 in May, and I breastfeed long-term and faithfully, and use it as an excuse to eat too much. *blushes* I did have a friend who brought breakfast for us once though, and that was so different and sweet! There were fresh fruit salad, a bunch of muffins for the freezer, and an egg bake. It was so nice!
I would love to have a copy…I think I could use some help with new ideas!
Thanks
Looks like a great book! One of the greatest things a friend brought over to me postpartum, were single serving containers of homemade soup together with some whole wheat rolls. It was great because I could grab one for lunch whenever I needed a quick fix and throw the rest in the freezer for later. It filled me up while providing loads of yummy veggies and protein!
My mom just kept making me any fresh veggies I wanted and brought them along with whatever else we were having. It was awesome!
The meal that stands out most in my mind was the first dinner I was served while still in the hospital following my C-section with my daughter. It was a wonderful, gourmet quality meal. Roasted cornish hen, sauted french green beans, rice pilaf and cherry pie! Too bad I couldn’t really eat it…anesthesia and surgery don’t make for good appetites!
Most people very generously gifted me and my family a lot of pastries! I had to keep them off the counter top, hide them in the pantry and make my fruits and veggies more easily accessible since I ate what I could get my hands on easily.
I’m 8 weeks post partum with baby #3 – we’ve been blessed by meals from friends, family and strangers. A dear friend set up our meal schedule for us and this is our first week with no meals… we might starve! 😉 Our favorite meals were hot, healthy homemade meals. I was surprised how much take-out was dropped off on our porch… we are so grateful for the thought but our family doesn’t usually eat that much take-out. We loved the good ol’ baked chicken, green salad, veggies and a roll. And of course the homemade cookies that came with it 🙂
When my son was born, someone brought over a delicious chicken pot pie, with salad, and a baguette. I ate that for DAYS! It was the only thing that sounded good.
Thanks for all the tips! I’m expecting again, and I’m hoping to be more prepared for eating well in those newborn weeks.
After giving birth to my third child, my husband brought my mother’s taco salad to our hotel room for my first meal after giving birth. I was so famished and it hit the spot. My parents stayed with us for the first two weeks after the births of my second and third child. I could never thank them enough for all the wonderful meals they cooked and dishes they cleaned. So awesome to not have to think about planning and making meals and I could just focus on the newborn and spend time with our other children.
Baby #4 is three weeks old today 🙂 we don’t live near family anymore so I haven’t had many meals cooked for me this time. I did freeze some things beforehand, but we have eaten most of them already! The first week my mon was here and did everything for me! I wish she still was! It’s not easy with four kIds 6 and under! And I am starvIng all the tIme! This book would be great for some new ideas.
After our first and second were born, we received meals from friends at church for several weeks. It was so nice. I dot really remember the meals specifically, but it was so nice!!
A lovely banana pudding. I’m not usually one for a dessert without chocolate, but my friend made us a big pan of it using lots of real shortbread cookies. It was amazing, and I slowly ate the whole thing over the entire week. It wasn’t healing for my body, but it was certainly healing to my soul after a particularly hard delivery.
I just made two loaves of Heidi Swanson’s spiced teff loaf cakes, and I froze one for after this baby is born. It’s full of teff flour and blackstrap molasses, which are both good sources of iron. Bonus: my toddler loves it too!
My favorite and only memorable post partum meal was one that my neighbor brought us the day we returned from the hospital. Grilled chicken, couscous and steamed vegetables. It was simple, but I thought at the time it was the best food I’d ever tasted. Thank goodness for the kindness of neighbors, as we hadn’t any food in the house and were too exhausted to do anything about it. Honestly, all the other meals are a blur, but I’ll always remember this one.
My girlfriend made an amazing mushroom & beef pot roast with gravy after my daughter was born. It was the perfect comfort meal.
This book sounds amazing! My church family did a great job of providing nourishing food for us until family could arrive from out of state. When it comes to bowel regularity…we had just received our annual order of 20lbs of blueberries (which we freeze to snack on year round). I may or may not have eaten between 2-3lbs of them myself as snacks. Needless to say, bowel regularity was not a problem!
This morning I sent the link to your overnight baked oatmeal to a postpartum friend. I took it to her two weeks ago and she loved how easy it was to feed to her two year old. Glad to see that I made a good choice for her nutritional needs as well.
I am pregnant now, so this would be super helpful. This would probably be frowned upon, but it seems that with each child, it has become a bit of a tradition that the first meal (once we’ve left the hospital) was In-n-out….it is too conveniently located near the hospital to resist. I remember getting a 4×4 with the first child (I was dang hungry)
My youngest is just 6 months. The picky big brothers are 13, 11, and 8. We realized by two months that babe is very allergic to gluten….now we are maybe adding dairy to the list of no’s. so, I’m often left with the question of what to eat. I’d love to read this book!
I am always wishing I had more to eat than what I serve my kids during the day. What a great book! One of my favorite snacks to eat postpartum are whole grain flat breads and homemade hummus.
I’m really excited about this! 🙂 I’ve been struggling with breastfeeding my son, cause it feels like my supply periodically dwindles, so I’ve been trying fenugreek supplements, but eating better to boost the supply would be amazing!!!! 🙂
Amanda,
Check out the “lactation cookies” recipe that you can find in many places through a google search. Basically cookies with lots of good stuff for milk supply – oatmeal, brewers yeast, and flaxseed. I don’t know if they scientifically boost milk supply, but even the IDEA that you are doing something to increase milk supply made a difference for me. That, and drinking lots of fluids!
This book looks great, I can use a few new ideas to get my body heatlhy again and get some energy!
I love smoothies, especially green smoothies. Which are usually the very first thing I eat after giving birth. Now since I don’t want the blender to wake the baby I’ll blend a big smoothie (a quart or more) when baby is away and keep the pitcher in the fridge. That way I can just refil my glass a few times a day to keep my energy up all day.
Thanks for the chance to will 🙂
I want to win this for my friend!!! She’s having a baby in October and would totally love it. OR….I could keep it and make these things for her and my other preggo friend 🙂 either way, it would be used!
I know it’s cliche to bring lasagna to a new mom, but my friend brought me one, and it was so delicious.
Really, any food that shows up homemade tastes WONDERFUL post baby. We were inundated with meals and so, so, so thankful. I think the most memorable was a big container of pulled pork with sandwich rolls and pasta salad. Memorable for 3 reasons:
1. I had never really eaten BBQ pulled pork before that and it quickly became a monthly staple in our house.
2. The meal was made by a male friend of ours.
3. Pasta salad keeps so wonderfully and was my go to snack for days!
This book should be really helpful in a couple years when I (hopefully) start having children!
What a lovely post! In my medical training I learned that raspberry leaf tea can actually inhibit lactation in some women…I know it seems to be the online recommendation for lactation all over the internet though…
I think because of my 23948 food allergies, people were afraid to make food for me after my babies were born. I think my favorite post-partum meal was homemade green Thai curry. I have a friend who received a box of 12 donuts… Donuts?! After giving birth, there’s nothing more I crave than fresh, healthy food!
I am a huge believer in cooking for others. After our little one came home, we were so blessed by friends delivering healthy meals. I try to pay it forward as often as I can! Looks like a great book!
A friend brought me the most delicious bbq chicken pizza after I had my daughter!
I gave birth in Romania and they fed me some weird stuff… but I remember really relishing the tangy yogurt and granola I got. My friend, who also gave birth in Romania, was served chicken livers wrapped in bacon – a meal she’d normally want to vomit over – and she gobbled them up because it had the nutrients she needed!
Several friends brought homemade meals – with lots of extra food – the first week after my daughter was born. All of them were amazing!
This book looks like a great addition to a shower gift I am planning. Homemade food to stock the freezer will be part of the gift so I might be able to try some of the recipes for her.
There are some talented ladies in my church who have made creative and tasty meals for us. My fav was a delicious quiche with fruit salad and muffins! Yum! If I win I am giving this book to my sister who just had her first.
I remember being terribly hungry the day after giving birth, I wish I had been better educated regarding healthy post-partum eating!!
Oh, this looks good. I am in my last month of pregnancy and will soon be eating post-partum.
We are expecting our third in August and this would help make the postpartum time so much easier! (My least favorite time of having children….) We have been blessed by lots of great meals from our church family after our first two children, but I admit, my favorite was an impromptu breakfast my husband made one night: fruit crepes, bacon and eggs. He’s a gem!
I’ve been seeing that book everywhere and I’d love to win a copy of my very own! Looks awesome!
One of my bestfriends came over while we were recovering in the hospital and stocked our fridge with homemade meals and easy and healthy snacks. She even has a small bottle of champagne for my husband and I to celebrate with…we waited until baby was a month old! It was wonderful not to worry about meals!
My favorite was a meal prepared by a friend from church. I was so impressed because not only did she make an Italian main dish, but also included some fresh bread AND a salad WITH Italian dressing. It was so thoughtful and helpful and so much appreciated.
Sounds like a great read!
Great post! Eating well can be so hard, even MONTHS after baby is born. I, personally, am still nursing my 6 month old twice over-night, so sometimes it’s hard to muster the energy to cook all of the nutritious foods I know my family needs. I try to remember that eating well is actually part of my job as a nursing mother, but it’s so easy to let it slide when there are a myriad of other things (ie. my toddler, the laundry, etc.) vying for my attention. This book would be a huge blessing to me and my family!
My favorite post-partum meal was chicken enchiladas with green sauce, served with a Mexican salad topped with black beans and corn. So yummy!!! I felt so loved by the person who brought it, gave my husband assembly instructions, and left quickly, knowing I needed my rest. That meal always brings back a great memory to me of being taken care of 🙂
I love this post! It’s such a great reminder. I’ll be having my second child in a few weeks and haven’t yet thought too much about my post partum healing diet.
I have a damaged digestive system due to endometriosis scarring so whole grains do NOT improve my digestion but raw fruits and veggies do. They aren’t enough though so when I saw those stewed prunes I knew I’d have to try them!
Looks like a great book! My best meal was some sqash/sage soup brought by a friend. Sage isn’t a good idea if you’re trying to stimulate milk production, but if you’re like me and have an overproduction issue (still do, 3 mnths later), it can help slow things down a bit. And, of course, soup is so comforting…
I’m expecting our first in July and would love a copy of this book. I’m lucky to have a health-conscious mom and sister nearby who will no doubt be filling my fridge with lots of nutritious foods.
I loved a chicken pot pie that some friends brought over for us. And just plain water tasted so good because I was so thirsty from breastfeeding!
After weeks of casseroles (which I like, but can get old after awhile) following the birth of my second daughter, a friend brought us nourishing soup, hot sandwiches, and salad for dinner one night. We DEVOURED that meal!